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If you EQ out everything below fundamental freq, do you lose room character?


This is pretty impressive. In the second example you don't even hear the higher tone anymore. The deep tartini tone overpowers it in my perception.
The question is if a low cut filter on the individual tones would prevent the effect. Probably not since it's a phenomenon created in our ears if I understand it right and thus for it shouldn't matter if the signal is filtered out below the fundamental.
 
personally i would not obsess over the details too much... imho the whole processing and adjusting thing can rapidily get out hand and become a bottomless rabbithole to disappear into (quite similar to sample library hoarding or synth and fx plugin collecting... ) instead of doing music (i lost musicians who were on a holy quest to create the ultimate hi-hat sound. i am afraid, several years later, they are still filtering and adjusting. i dimly remember a rather funny anectode from years long past... there was a rather succesful pop music act, and everyone and their cat was marvelling about the amazing drum sound... much later someone made the discovery that it were stock preset triton drum kits :) )...

as a sheep i would keep it rather simple. volume, pan position, a bit of reverb... if this sounds good do some more detail work. as little as possible, actually i believe that less is more in terms of processing. and trust your ears is probably at the same time the best (and also the most difficult) advice that was given.

the whole highpass,eq everything idea comes with a certain sound ideal... it works for modern, popular music that has to be as loud as possible, and sounds need to be separated, in order to maximize impact.

e.g. one trick to make a dominant rhythmic part stand out in modern music is to sidechain. works quite well for house music. but would sidechaining your contra bassoons be a good idea to give them more ooomppfff? but wait maybe sidechaining contra bassoons will be the next big thing... forget about braaams...it will be all about earth shattering contra bassoons...you heard it here first! :)

in a more acoustic orchestral context blending is actually not a bad thing at all - and a large dynamic range is a good thing. of course if one discovers some low grumbling on a track highpassing is quite nice. but to highpass everything might not be helpful - but a little might go a long way.

actually if there is too much build up in a certain frequency range, instead of starting to process (which can be still done after all) it might be helpful to look at the composition and see why it adds up, maybe there is just too much going on at once, maybe all that is needed is to separate the instruments over more octaves...

sorry...what was the original question again?
 
This is pretty impressive. In the second example you don't even hear the higher tone anymore. The deep tartini tone overpowers it in my perception.
The question is if a low cut filter on the individual tones would prevent the effect. Probably not since it's a phenomenon created in our ears if I understand it right and thus for it shouldn't matter if the signal is filtered out below the fundamental.
Experiment with samples ... . ;)
 
personally i would not obsess over the details too much... imho the whole processing and adjusting thing can rapidily get out hand and become a bottomless rabbithole to disappear into (quite similar to sample library hoarding or synth and fx plugin collecting... ) instead of doing music (i lost musicians who were on a holy quest to create the ultimate hi-hat sound. i am afraid, several years later, they are still filtering and adjusting. i dimly remember a rather funny anectode from years long past... there was a rather succesful pop music act, and everyone and their cat was marvelling about the amazing drum sound... much later someone made the discovery that it were stock preset triton drum kits :) )...

as a sheep i would keep it rather simple. volume, pan position, a bit of reverb... if this sounds good do some more detail work. as little as possible, actually i believe that less is more in terms of processing. and trust your ears is probably at the same time the best (and also the most difficult) advice that was given.

the whole highpass,eq everything idea comes with a certain sound ideal... it works for modern, popular music that has to be as loud as possible, and sounds need to be separated, in order to maximize impact.

e.g. one trick to make a dominant rhythmic part stand out in modern music is to sidechain. works quite well for house music. but would sidechaining your contra bassoons be a good idea to give them more ooomppfff? but wait maybe sidechaining contra bassoons will be the next big thing... forget about braaams...it will be all about earth shattering contra bassoons...you heard it here first! :)

in a more acoustic orchestral context blending is actually not a bad thing at all - and a large dynamic range is a good thing. of course if one discovers some low grumbling on a track highpassing is quite nice. but to highpass everything might not be helpful - but a little might go a long way.

actually if there is too much build up in a certain frequency range, instead of starting to process (which can be still done after all) it might be helpful to look at the composition and see why it adds up, maybe there is just too much going on at once, maybe all that is needed is to separate the instruments over more octaves...

sorry...what was the original question again?
If you have 50 instruments in the arrangement, all playing at the same time and all fighting for the same frequencies, then with good EQ's you can actually make it sound very clear and just great. Provided you have good ears and equipment. ;)
 
Likely controversial opinion: those on either extreme of process everything and do no processing should be disregarded. Extremes are rarely ever good in music production or mixing.
 
Non professional here...

High and low cuts that aren't linear phase, at least in the EQs I have, produce phase issues. Linear phase EQs introduce ringing. A reasonable compromise is to not use a cut, but a shelf, even of 20db, or even 30db. Some phase impact, but no nulls, and likely not necessary to use linear phase so more ringing can be avoided.

Gentle (6db or maybe 12db) high/low cuts definitely have less impact on phase, but can still produce nulls depending on the frequency with which they start.

I learned this from a Dan W video :cool:
 
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